By Eric Roston and Lili Pike Bloomberg
The world’s shift to clean energy will be “the biggest transition in the history of humankind” thanks in large part to China’s investment in renewables, former US Secretary of State John Kerry said in an interview Wednesday.
“The marketplace writ large, globally, has made the decision,” Kerry said in the interview at the Bloomberg Green summit in New York.
China has deployed more renewable energy since 2019 than the rest of the world put together. Its rise as the world’s clean-energy goliath has outpaced its assertion of global leadership on the issue, which Kerry described as a work in progress.
“China’s kind of feeling their way, learning how to maneuver on that international stage as a leader of these things,” Kerry said. “We don’t know yet whether they really will be able to do it.”
China is considering making a bid to host COP in 2028, which would be its first time chairing the annual United Nations climate conference. The country “wants to play a bigger role, and will try to flex their knowledge and muscles in order to try and do that,” Kerry said. He added that with the right commitments in place, it could be an “effective” host.
Under President Donald Trump, the US has withdrawn from global climate negotiations and treaties. Kerry, who served as President Joe Biden’s special envoy for climate change, criticized the Trump administration for breaking with US diplomatic strategy and practices dating back to at least World War II.
“We hear politicians in Washington pontificating saying, ‘We gotta beat China,’” he said. “Well, you’re not number one if you pull off the battlefield. You’re not number one if you’re not there competing, and we’re not there competing on those things.”
European leaders, he said, are “impatient for a transition back to an America that is working for everybody.”
Beyond the acceleration of renewable energy deployment, Kerry pointed to some signs of momentum on the international goal to conserve 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030. More than two dozen nations are expected to meet in Australia next month to discuss a new “multi-purpose” marine protected area off East Antarctica in the Southern Ocean, which would establish conservation goals while also allowing some fishing.
